The present invention relates to a method for updating a document, and more particularly to a method for updating a document by means of appending new materials to an old version document.
Typically, there are two techniques employed to obtain updated information, namely 1) by mail, i.e., information provider mails a diskette or CD comprising the updated information to a user, or 2) by accessing information through Internet. Information retrieved by both techniques are stored in an updated document comprising the updated information and information stored in the old document. Then, the updated document replaces the old document in the next data update.
Both techniques are easy to implement. However, the updated document size tends to become larger as the update version becomes newer. Further, the download time for such updated document is going to become longer as the file size grows. As a result, a user may cost more on retrieving information through Internet as well as have to use a larger capacity disk to store the growing file. Additionally, it is impossible to implement the document updating and the identification of the old and new versions automatically. To the worse, the determination between different versions is difficult and time consuming.
Thus, it is desirable to provide an improved document updating method to overcome the above drawbacks of prior art.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for updating a document by means of appending for reducing the file size of an updated document as well as reducing the time to download the updated document through Internet.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method for updating a document by means of appending for enabling a user to easily carry out a query to documents with different versions and a switching between them.
The advantages of the present invention are realized by providing a method for updating a document by means of appending new materials to an old version document. The method comprises the steps of reading an old version original document; initializing the original document to have a name and an index number for correspondingly identifying the original document; opening an updated file consisting of a new file; establishing a name for correspondingly identifying the updated file; and appending the updated file to the original document to form an updated document.